Monday, 30 June 2014

The truth is that I’d had mixed feelings about going to
Mozart’s La finta giardiniera at
Glyndebourne. Early Mozart operas can be a somewhat tedious procession of recitativo alternating with aria, the latter usually of the ‘stand
and deliver’ variety.

What’s more, it was to be produced by a young director with
virtually no track record either on the opera stage or in the theatre, Frederic
Wake-Walker. Would it turn out to be another tiresome travesty, the goings-on
on stage apparently unrelated to the work and its universe?

Of course, in the event it was one of the most exciting
productions seen at the house in some 45 years of Glyndebourne visits. The
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, conducted by Glyndebourne’s new musical
director Robin Ticciati, were, as expected, on top form, producing
scintillating sounds. And the seven who took the principal roles (Christiane
Karg, Rachel Frenkel, Joélle
Harvey, Nicole Heaston, Joel Prieto, Gyula Orendt and Wolfgang
Ablinger-Sperrhacke) were all outstanding, both as actors and singers. So far,
so good.

But it was the production itself that was an extraordinary
revelation. First, the director Wake-Walker and his designer (Antony McDonald) had actually
located the action (at least initially) in the Rococo period. Quite a shock in
itself. And the performers had clearly studied art of that time, at least
sufficiently to reproduce credible Rococo gesture (see above).

As time went by – I seemed to be holding my breath for long
periods – the production took on a wild, improvisatory life, one that clearly
took a bewitched audience on a theatrical ride that all seemed to spring from
character and situation – and from the music.

Friday, 27 June 2014

One of those Australian pianist pupils of Leschetizsky,
Fritz Müller, particularly
aroused my curiosity.

Raised in Melbourne in an immigrant German-Australian
home, his early years followed the usual path – fêted child prodigy at eleven in 1899; a committee of
the great and good formed to fund his further development in Europe; and he
left for Berlin, where he was heard later that same year by the great
Australian diva Nellie Melba, who was bowled over by his talent, writing to her
sister in Melbourne: ‘I don’t wonder you rave about him. He is a wonder.’

By this time young Fritz was under the wing of the
conservatoire head, one of the greatest violinists of the era, Joseph Joachim.
All predicted a glittering future for the boy.

But what then? Following a return to Melbourne to raise
further funding and a move back to Vienna to finish his studies with
Leschetizky – virtually nothing. I even came to the tentative conclusion that
he might have been killed in the First World War (in which he did in fact serve
in the German Army).

But not so. Eventually I found some answers in Patricia
Fullerton’s biography of the Australian artist Hugh Ramsay. The Ramsays and the
Müllers were close
friends in Melbourne. To the disappointment of his Melbourne siblings, who had made great sacrifices to support his career, it seems
that Fritz never made much of a splash on the concert platform in Europe, being
content to earn a living playing in the hotels of Munich.

Perhaps Melba had had an intuition that he might not make
the expected grade, noticing that he was ‘rather like a butterfly’. And another
contemporary, the pianist-composer Percy Grainger commented that Fritz lacked
‘a strong mother behind his career.’

Are those factors still the secret to success in making the
transition from prodigy to stardom – driven focus and a strong mother?

The ghastly Dance Moms on current TV suggests that they might still represent a
potent cocktail.

Tuesday, 24 June 2014

I notice that the wonderful pianist who came to play for us
with the Soloists of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment on Sunday, Sam
Haywood, is not only a pupil of the renowned Austrian Paul Badura-Skoda, but
also of someone less well known to the general public, Maria Curcio.

Italian-born Curcio was an astoundingly successful teacher ‒ her pupils including
many of the finest pianists of the past half century, including Martha
Argerich, Radu Lupu, Mitsuko Uchida, Leon Fleisher and Peter Frankl. She
herself was the last pupil of the great Artur Schnabel ‒ himself one of the later pupils of the great piano
pedagogue of the late nineteenth century, Theodor Leschetizky.

Budding young pianists came from all over the world to study
at Leschetizky’s piano school in Vienna, among these a steady stream of pupils
from Australia – and it is these that I have particularly been researching in
recent times. It seems that, if you were a promising player in that country, you
would seek to study with the finest teacher in Europe – and for many that was
Leschetizky.

His name became firmly established in Australian
consciousness as a result of concert tours there made by two of his most famous
pupils – Mark Hambourg (several times from 1895) and Ignacy Jan Paderewski in
1904, plus Jan Cherniavsky with his two brothers, who formed the Cherniavsky
Trio, who made six extensive tours.

In all some ten Australians found their way to Leschetizky’s
school, the earliest in 1897 being Yvonne Leverrier from Sydney. She was
followed the next year by another Sydney-based pianist, Frederick Barron
Morley. Then came Laurence Godfrey Smith, Violet Balmain, a mysterious ‘Miss
Lewis’, Fritz Müller
(who gained the support of Dame Nellie Melba), Florence Taylor, Maude Puddy,
Rita Hope and Emily Dyason.

Although many of them were regarded as child prodigies, none
of these pianists became famous as performing artists. Many returned to
Australia, where they gave occasional concerts, but mostly earned their
livelihoods as teachers.

So my speculation is that the country will now have dozens, maybe
hundreds, of pedagogical grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Leschetizky.
I wonder how many of them are aware of this, and if any of the great pedagogue’s
teachings survive there? I think this must be so. Peter Goldsworthy’s novel of
1989, Maestro, is based around a fictional pupil of Leschetizky (and as such
treated with awe), who teaches in Darwin.

I briefly thought about all this as Sam Haywood played Schubert
so persuasively in King’s Sutton last Sunday.

Saturday, 21 June 2014

Jeremy Paxman, master of the sarcastic aside, who retired
from BBC2’s Newsnight this week, was rarely bested in interview. I’m not alone
in thinking that Russell Brand acquitted himself very well with him.

Wednesday, 18 June 2014

I used to have a birthday party every ten years. My fortieth
was in Sydney, with the fiftieth at a half-built Shakespeare’s Globe in London
(Endymion playing Mozart and Krommer), and since then they have been held in
our village on the Northamptonshire-Oxfordshire border, King’s Sutton.

But, as
time seems to be truncating (see welcome guest Julian Barbour’s The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Physics), I’ve been having one every five years.

This time around, we were lucky enough to get the Soloists
of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment playing Schubert (the Trout
Quintet and his earlier Adagio and Rondo Concertante in F), plus Hummel’s Piano
Quintet in E flat minor. This last was the great discovery for many.

The church was filled with an appreciative audience, its
acoustic near perfect, our 1870 Broadwood piano well-tuned, the players – a mix
of wonderful old friends and brilliant young ones – in top form, with virtuoso
double-bassist Chi-chi Nwanoku (above) at her most animated.

All this followed by a convivial tea party in the garden at
home with family and friends – efficient waitress-service provided by daughter
Dora and BFFs. Deep joy all round.

Sunday, 15 June 2014

I went to see my cousin and godfather, L Graham Browne‒
‘Uncle Bill’ ‒ in
the Birmingham office of his ad agency, to ask him to give me a job. I was
nineteen, in awe of him, and fundamentally unemployable in the opinion of both
me and my father.

‘You need to leave home,’ he told me. ‘Go to London. If you
really want to work in advertising, I’ll give you the addresses of the leading
agencies there. You’ll need to apply for the mailroom.’

A few weeks later I found myself in an interview with the
head of traffic control at J Walter Thompson in Berkeley Square, Harry Garnell.
It seemed to be going quite well.

‘Do you have any questions?’ he asked me.

‘What do you particularly have to have, to be successful in
advertising?’ I enquired.

‘Well, you need more than anything to have a butterfly
mind,’ he responded, ‘able to shift from one thing to another in an instant.’

Thursday, 12 June 2014

I often ask groups in innovation teams to nominate the most
important invention in the history of mankind. The ‘usual suspects’, the ones that
come up most frequently, are the wheel, printing and the internet.

But how about paper? Twenty years ago, I used to hear so
much about the impending arrival of the 'paperless office'. That never looked
close to happening. And in more recent times it’s been the supposed death of
newspapers and books.

But still paper remains central to our lives.

So when was it invented – and by whom?

It seems to have been born in China, sometime around 100AD,
and has been ascribed to a eunuch in the Han court called Cai Lun. In its
earliest incarnations, paper was made from hemp waste, but over time this was
mixed with other plant materials – tree bark, bamboo etc.

Over the following centuries, paper-making spread throughout
Asia, arriving in Europe and North Africa around the 12th century,
gradually replacing parchment and vellum.

The arrival of printing in Europe in the 14th
century led to a massive growth in its usage.

Its uses nowadays remain so many and varied – from packaging
to Post-it notes, from banknotes to bodily waste. And in the office.

Monday, 9 June 2014

There has been a gap of forty years between editions of the
Northamptonshire Buildings of England. Bridget Cherry was Nikolaus Pevsner’s
partner in 1973, but the newly-published one has been the work of Bruce Bailey.

And while the book has roughly doubled in size, the entry
concerning our village, King’s Sutton, remains virtually untouched at a little
less than two pages, over half of it devoted to the parish church, plus
(briefly) two other churches and two houses (the Manor and its near neighbour
the Court House).

Mr Bailey perhaps came here on a wet Tuesday.

Buildings that might have made their presence felt
by now could include the Neo-Gothic Old School House of 1847 and the Lutyens-style
St Rumbolds of 1922; a number of interesting 18th century dwellings
(Lovells and the Bell House in The Square); some 17th century
cottages of character (Monks Cottages, also in The Square, Q Cottage in Wales
Street – yes, really, Q-shaped – and the Old Lace House in Astrop Road). Also,
up towards nearby Astrop, the 18th century Gate House with its
interesting semi-circular gable end, College Farm and the mysterious Grey Court
and its various subsidiary buildings of note.

An interesting discovery of recent times at the parish
church, not noticed by Mr Bailey, are the sculptured forms of St Peter and St
Paul, high up on the west face of the tower. They were first noticed by a
visiting Australian chorister from Oxford, and they appear to the naked eye to
be far earlier than the fourteenth century building of the tower – perhaps saved
from a previous building campaign.

Maybe, a further forty years from now, another edition will appear
with some of the above included. Just a thought.

Friday, 6 June 2014

Thinking today of all those soldiers, sailors and airmen
involved in the D-Day landings in Normandy, and of all who lost their lives in
that great battle – British, American, Canadian, French and German.

Tuesday, 3 June 2014

Speaking of ‘failure’, as I was, I particularly like what Boris
Pasternak has Zhivago say on the subject to Lara:

I don’t think I could love you so
much if you had nothing to complain of and nothing to regret. I don’t like
people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn’t
of much value. Life hasn’t revealed its beauty to them.

What a great novel is Doctor Zhivago, one of the very best
of the twentieth century, I feel ‒
somewhat underrated now. Time to read it again...

Sunday, 1 June 2014

Recent highlighting of the value of failure includes a book
by Mario Livio, Brilliant Blunders: From
Darwin to Einstein – Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our
Understanding of Life and the Universe, and coincidentally the opening in
Edinburgh of the world’s first Library of
Mistakes.

In engineering, it’s usually possible to try things out,
learn from failure and adapt quite quickly. In developing a successful light
bulb, Thomas Edison did hundreds, even thousands, of iterations in developing a
filament that would both provide good illumination and last a decent length of
time, with a multitude of failures along the path.

Science is rather different, as major new theories sometimes
have to wait for years before they can be either validated or discarded.

The new library in Edinburgh records a litany of
financial disasters. I wonder if anyone at RBS (or any of the other banks that
ran themselves into the rocks) will be paying it a visit?

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Welcome

When I started this blog, the posts were mainly about innovation, creativity and leadership matters. So if you want the see those, they are mostly in the earlier years. More recently I've been writing about the arts - music, literature and art itself. I still post from time to time on innovation matters and indeed anything else that intrigues me.

About Me

Roger Neill FRSA, FIoD, is Managing Partner of the innovation consultancy, Per Diem. He was Founding Director of the Centre for Creativity, City University London, and international managing partner for Synectics Corporation, a world leader in innovation and creativity. He writes, speaks and conducts masterclasses and workshops around the world.
Previously Roger worked in marketing communications. For ten years he was with Saatchi & Saatchi and was appointed to the board of directors aged 27. With Lintas (now Lowe) he became chairman in Australia/New Zealand and regional director for Asia/Pacific. He was deputy chairman of WCRS Worldwide in London. Roger was World President of the International Advertising Association 1990-1992.
An expert on the innovators, artists, writers and musicians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he helped Sam Wanamaker to re-build Shakespeare's Globe in London. He curated the exhibition Legends: The Art of Walter Barnett for the National Portrait Gallery in Australia. Roger was founder of Sinfonia 21 and chairman of Endymion Ensemble. He started his working life as a professional rock musician.